Plant Phys Essay

Plants sense gravity using statoliths in their roots. By cutting a cross section of the root and staining them, the researchers found that statoliths are present in adventitious root nodes no matter the age of the node. In order to study the variable of gravity when it came to the adventitious root growth, they used different experiments. First, they used a clinostat experiment, where the plants were planted and mounted and rotated for three days. After the rotation, the rotated stems had a root angle of 106°, as opposed non rotated stems which had an angle of 120.4°. The stems that were being rotated were unable to feel a constant directional effect of gravity, while the non rotated stems did, which means that gravity had a 14.4° change on the root angle.